


thirsty in the desert with a bagful of gold

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Series: burn so bright that the fire goes out [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien grows a spine, Discussion of Extinction, Episode: s03 Climatika 2 | Stormy Weather 2, F/M, Identity Reveal, sitting these two clowns down to talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 15:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: "Hey Hawkmoth, Take A Bath Before We're All Extinct (or, Stormy Weather Would Not Have Stopped)"—μcat,Schrödinger’s Miraculous: physics in the City of Heroes (may work differently when observed)It was Mme. Mendeleiev's fault, really. She liked bringing current events into her lesson plans, and μcat the superhero-science blogger had done a lot of research and a lot of math in the four days after the second go-round with Stormy Weather. Marinette, looking at all the equations and cited sources and clear, concise prose salted with wordplay, wondered if μcat had slept at all in those four days. If she focused on how long it must have taken them to read each article, run each set of numbers, write each paragraph, then she had no attention to spare for the words "extinction event", and needn't think about what it meant here and now. What it implied. What it must havetakento make itnot.(Adrien whisked Aurore out of the classroom the moment he saw the essay title. He then casually leaned on the door frame, blocking Chloé from following. Marinette should have thought of those herself.)Marinette lasted two more days before she cracked.





	thirsty in the desert with a bagful of gold

**Author's Note:**

> I feel it's important to warn you lot that, [given the implications of "Stormy Weather 2", from here out if I'm not exploring that episode then I'm probably not treating it as canon](https://allthemiraculous.dreamwidth.org/4279.html). I mean, if the Harry Potter lot can write the epilogue out of canon for breaking shit…

The first akuma after Mme. Mendeleiev pulled the _Schrödinger's Miraculous_ post out of her lesson plan was fucking _tiddlywinks_ in comparison to Stormy Weather Strikes Back. It was Go fucking _Fish_. It was only harder than Clock Solitaire because it was multiplayer!

(It was probably about as hard as Gigantitan, Episode I, actually. Though such a metric was inherently subjective, and kind of had to be skewed here by the horrible moods Ladybug and Chat Noir were taking out on the poor bastard, for lack of access to butterfly butt himself.)

As far as Ladybug could tell from the akuma's remarks, Hawkmoth was blatantly ignoring what this meant, what he through Stormy Weather had done, what _would have happened_ if he had _won_. Perhaps it was hypocritical to fault him for keeping his train of thought from stopping at that station—after all, look how well _she_ was coping with the notion that it was possible for _her_ to act on the global scale!—but really she did not, and did not want to, _care_.

And honestly, if _Syren_ hadn't given the man pause…

School had let out for the evening during the akuma fight; Ladybug had plenty of time to snag Chat Noir and insist he recharge and meet her in fifteen minutes. "Where you set things up before Glaciator," she decided.

Chat looked like he wanted to crack wise about that, but was, unusually, too somber to try. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

He beat her to the balcony. Ladybug hardly slowed on landing, slamming full-bodied into her partner and hanging on for dear life. Chat rocked back but didn't fall, steady and strong as always, and wrapped his arms around her, and let her cry.

At last Ladybug raised her head from his shoulder. She'd ended up sitting in his lap and wasn't sure how, but that was _so_ not a major concern right now. "So," she said. "Um. Do you read the _Schrödinger's Miraculous_ blog?"

Chat snorted. "I'm μcat." He pronounced the Greek letter mu (the coefficient, she remembered the About page saying, of friction) as _mew_ , which…explained everything, really. Then he winced. "Uh, don't poke that too hard, it's a civilian-name handle, I'm hoping to put that work on university applications later. I've got another handle for commenting as Chat Noir, but sometimes I just use it to have flame wars with myself."

Ladybug huffed, too hollow inside to give that the burst of laughter it deserved. "Only you, Chat." She buried her face in his neck: if Chat Noir was μcat, then he already knew. He, in fact, knew better than she did.

She didn't know what to make of any of that.

"You saw this week's article," said Chat quietly.

Ladybug said, "Yeah."

"What do you need right now?" Chat asked.

Ladybug held him a little tighter and didn't answer.

"I don't…I keep thinking," Chat Noir confessed. "In 1945, when they first tested the nuclear bomb, Dr. Oppenheimer remembered a line from the Bhagavad Gita. 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' And…Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated, but they _recovered_. A million people live in Hiroshima now. I'm afraid to ask how much damage the world's nuclear arsenal could do, but as long as there's enough Stanislav Petrovs, the answer will probably stay 'Hiroshima and Nagasaki'. Maybe Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, too, depending how we count. But no more."

"The K-T boundary," murmured Ladybug.

"K-Pg," Chat corrected, "they deprecated the 'Tertiary' label. And yeah, that's gonna be hard to top. I don't think the world has that many nukes. Good _Gods_ I hope we don't have that many nukes." He paused. "Why mention it?"

"You're wondering how much damage you can do," Ladybug said. It wasn't a question. "I think you're a control valve on Plagg, or something. I don't know how…how open you can get. It's just. Plagg admitted to causing that."

Chat groaned. "Thanks for the nightmare fuel." A moment later, he asked, "When did you hear this?"

"Style Queen. Master Fu was yelling at Plagg for wanting to fight her without you."

"Ah," said Chat Noir.

They fell silent. Chat was gently rubbing up and down her back; Ladybug wasn't entirely sure he knew it, but it seemed to be soothing him, so even if she didn't like it she might not have complained. She imagined her partner was about as enthused to continue discussing this topic as she was.

Eventually Ladybug pulled back a little. "I can't do this," she told him. "I didn't think I could do this with Stoneheart. But you needed Ladybug and Alya needed Ladybug and—I tried to give Alya the earrings," she confessed: a shameful secret, something she had told herself no one would ever know. "I put them in her school bag so she would find them and she could _be_ a superhero. But when Stoneheart came back, she left the bag behind and—" She was crying again. Chat was watching her, eyes wide and soft. "I put the earrings back on because it was the only choice I could make and still live with myself after! I won't take them off now, and that's why! But _I can't do this_!"

"I'm right here," Chat told her. "You don't have to do this alone. I'm with you all the way. Rena Rouge and Carapace, too. Master Fu. More kwamis than we've met, probably." He hesitated. "I…do not think we should call on Queen Bee again."

"Not till she understands the meaning of _consequences_ ," Ladybug said darkly.

"Which, since she doesn't seem to realize Hawkmoth probably targeted her father _because_ she whipped out a Miraculous during Nadja Chamack's live broadcast, and that's _definitely_ why Hawkmoth used her parents and butler against us on Heroes' Day…"

"So never," concluded Ladybug. "I thought she was doing better, after Zombizou. She said to my face and Mme. Bustier's she knew she'd screwed up. I really thought, since _I'm_ so much better a person than before being Ladybug, if _she_ got the same chance…" She sighed. "I am not making that mistake again."

"Yeah." Chat closed his eyes for a long moment. "I'm going to talk to her friend Adrien," he said. "Chloé was doing better at being a decent person while he wasn't speaking to her because of how horribly she was treating people."

Ladybug shook her head. "Don't," she said, and when Chat frowned, confused, she continued, "None of this is Adrien's fault. He shouldn't have to lose his oldest friend over this. He hardly has any to begin with."

Chat shrugged. "I'll convince him it's his idea. You can't tell me he'd have fewer friends if he stayed clear of Chloé anyway; I _know_ there's people at that school who won't approach him _because_ of her."

This, Ladybug had to admit with a guilty thought of how _she_ had dismissed Adrien that first day, was probably true. "Okay."

"So next time we need the Bee," Chat said, and stopped.

"I don't know, Chat." Ladybug focused her attention on the curve of his left human ear. "The stakes are so much higher than we thought. I don't know who we can trust that much. I don't trust _me_ that much." She did him, but she doubted he agreed. "And nobody chose Chloé, really, and I'm not entirely sure if it was Master Fu or Tikki and Plagg who chose _us_ , but _I_ chose Rena and Carapace, and I stood by Chloé, and I _can't_."

Chat turned to look to one side. "I have a couple people in mind," he said. "If…uh, if you're willing to trust my judgment here."

"Of course I trust you!" Ladybug exclaimed, appalled that he could imply any other possibility. "Chat, you're—I—"

Then she realized where Chat was looking.

"Please for the love of all things holy don't say you're thinking of Marinette Dupain-Cheng."

Chat snorted. "Have I ever lied to you, LB? Do you really want me to start now?"

"Shut up."

For obvious reasons, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was not an option on the table. The problem was, Chat Noir did not know that, and to convince him without revealing herself might take a simple no, but might require Ladybug acting to damage Marinette's character in Chat's eyes.

Sue her for not wanting her partner to think less of her.

"I can't do this," Ladybug repeated. "I can't do this alone. You're the only one I can talk to about all this, Chat, and most of the time, you're not _there_."

"Not my fault," Chat muttered.

"Not fault, just facts." Ladybug let herself fall against him again. "I hate secrets. I hate lies. I _cannot do this_."

Chat held her close. "We can do anything together, you and me," he told her. "But yeah. I'm scared too."

"You had your epic freakout already, didn't you," Ladybug accused tiredly. He had to have. He'd _written_ the words it had taken her two days to process.

"Yep."

Ladybug huffed and pried herself away and up. "Stay there," she told him, and plopped herself down again, her back against his. "I need to talk to Tikki and Plagg for a minute."

"Sure," Chat answered. "Claws in."

"Spots off," Ladybug said, and watched Tikki spiral back into existence. If Marinette reached back, just a bit, she could find Chat Noir's ungloved hand. "Tikki, just how bad an idea is it for Chat and me to turn around right now?"

"Do it!" exclaimed Plagg, laughing. "I want to see your faces!"

"Plagg!" snapped Tikki.

"I mean it," retorted Plagg. "He's so lovesick it's _sickening_."

"Plagg!" yelped Chat. He had the same idea about bare hands, it seemed.

Marinette curled her fingers around his, leaning back against his strength. "I know it's dangerous for us to know each other's identities," she told them. "Rena and Carapace proved that pretty thoroughly, on Heroes' Day."

"Yeah, about that," interjected Chat, "why do they get to know and I don't?"

"I didn't feel like wasting an hour trying to get them in different rooms long enough to give them their Miraculouses separately," Marinette explained. "Rena had already figured Carapace out anyway. She was right there for Anansi."

"…Alya and Nino," Chat realized. "If you hadn't already said you chose them, I'd seriously wonder if there was some pan-Miraculous conspiracy against our problem children."

Marinette decided not to answer that last. Given her class's akumatization rate—excepting herself, whether because she was Ladybug or because she'd dodged twice, only Adrien had so far escaped—she couldn't rule out that there _was_.

"I'm serious, Tikki," she told her mentor. "I don't know about Chat Noir—I think I can guess, but I don't _know_ —but if _I_ keep going like this, I am going to lose my marbles altogether. And then all this bullshit will land on the head of a _new_ Ladybug. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing even a little. Unless you tap Alya or Nino, but even then. And someone who Chat won't be able to trust. Not as much. Not at first." Marinette swallowed. "Think about how fast that could end in disaster. And then tell me, Tikki. _Just how badly_ should we _not_ turn around?"

Tikki thought about that.

Chat Noir's thumb brushed, soothingly, repetitively, over Marinette's knuckles.

"Well, we know Plagg's opinion," Tikki said at last. "Chat Noir?"

"What Ladybug decides, goes," Chat said at once. "I _want_ to know your name, my lady. I have from the start. You know that. And it is killing me right now not to come see your face, and if I lose you because I _don't_ know—" He squeezed her hand. "But I'm not going to look until you say I may."

"We should consult Master Fu," Tikki suggested.

"After last time we saw him?" Marinette demanded. "He told me in so many words that when he dies, _I'm_ the next Guardian. And then decisions like this wouldn't be his problem anyway!"

"Is that something we're worrying about?" Chat asked, sounding shaky. "Because I have to tell you, I don't think my Mandarin is up to that grimoire."

"He's fine," Marinette reassured him. "He was—dealing with a minor but embarrassing health complaint, let's say. Mostly overreacting, really. And that is the end of _that_ story." If Chat got wind of how she'd given Adrien Master Fu's laxative prescription instead of her own proclamation of love, she would never hear the end of it. "He's just… If we're going to think about bringing anyone else on full time, it can't be Carapace," she told him, in a tone meant to allow no argument. "It's probably fine to loan Nino the bracelet for a couple hours here and there. But I don't want it or Wayzz away from Master Fu any longer than that, if we can avoid it. I don't know what will happen when his body realizes just how _old_ he is."

"Nothing pretty," Chat said with a sigh. "Tikki, really, what do you think?"

Tikki looked over Marinette's shoulder, probably at Plagg, who said nothing.

"Tikki," said Marinette.

She sighed. "I think my initial reasons for wanting you both to keep your identities secret even from each other still stand."

"And what were those reasons?" asked Marinette.

"One of the risks Plagg's and my wielders always run is codependency," Tikki told them. "Getting so wrapped up in each other that no one else really matters. Relying so strongly on each other that there's no one else to rely on."

Marinette thought about her parents. About Alya and Nino. Rose and Juleka and Alix and Mylène. Most of her class, really. Probably actually most of the city, which went triply for most of those who had been akumatized, and to some extent it didn't matter that she could only call on them as Ladybug, not Marinette. Even Adrien—maybe _especially_ Adrien, for all she still couldn't string together coherent sentences around him without Ladybug's mask to hide behind. After all, he _had_ clearly concluded the damned laxative prescription was something Marinette couldn't get in Paris, or was too embarrassed to get herself or to trust her parents or Alya with, or something. Of course he was wrong, but that wasn't his fault—he could have texted to clarify, but then so could she!—and he had certainly come through for her.

At the very beginning…maybe she could see how knowing Chat unmasked might be a problem. Now? It seemed unlikely.

"And just how worried are we about that?" Chat asked irritably. "Because I don't think it's mathematically possible for me to think about Ladybug _more_. So I'm really unhappy about hearing I don't get to know her name because we're trying to avoid a trap I'm already _in_."

"I'm a trap, am I?" Marinette asked dryly.

Chat groaned. "You hush. You _know_ what I meant."

Marinette, who did know but didn't want to admit it, and who _really_ wasn't acknowledging her accidental innuendo if he wasn't, brought her free hand up over her shoulder, to rest her fingertips on his warm shoulder. Almost instantly, his other hand rose to join hers.

"We are…less worried than we were the first few months," Tikki said carefully. "Given…the givens…I don't think we will ever be _un_ worried about you two."

"And just how important is it," Marinette said, reaching slowly for each next right word, "to keep the two of us from getting unhealthily absorbed in each other, if the price is one or both of us not having the support we need to do our job?"

"Very not," said Plagg.

"Plagg, don't," said Tikki.

"I mean it, Tikki. There is almost no downside to telling them now. There's a _lot_ of potential downside to _not letting them_. And hey, if she knows, then I might actually get somewhere with getting him out of his father's house before that man destroys him!"

" _Plagg_ ," said Chat. Was he crying?

"I'm deadly serious, kid."

"I know." Chat sniffled. "Cheese budget."

Marinette was going to have to ask about that. Later. "Tikki, even if Chat and I _do_ get scary codependent…as long as we can keep doing our job that way, isn't that the best choice we've got?"

"You're _fifteen!_ "

Tikki's voice was pitched more sternly than Marinette had ever heard her.

And more frightened.

"You're fifteen," she repeated. "You're hardly more than children! I can't let you destroy yourselves like this!"

" _Then you shouldn't have chosen us!_ "

Marinette squeezed Chat's hand beside them on the balcony. They'd shouted together.

"Then you should have chosen _adults_ ," Marinette said again. "You had to know choosing teenagers for this could easily end up with dead teenagers. It already _has_."

Ladybug trusted her own powers—trusted _Tikki_ —enough that, on realizing how the pipe was going to bring down Backwarder, she had just _gone_ with it. But she had told Chat Noir at the time it was the most complicated plan she'd ever had, bar none. This wasn't quite true—that was probably the plan she'd deployed against the Sapotis, unless she was counting the tennis racket on Heroes' Day, which maybe she wasn't—but she had meant it about needing to focus, because there were so many potential failure points. And no simple 'I'm sorry' could make amends for abusing Chat's trust that way; he would gladly have thrown himself on that sword had she only _asked_ , but she hadn't asked. And then she had spent more of that weekend frantically ignoring memories of losing Chat to Timebreaker than frantically ignoring the impending humiliation from Adrien and that double-damned prescription.

"You should have chosen adults," Marinette repeated. "Maybe you should _still_ choose adults."

Chat sucked in an audible breath.

"Maybe we should both give back the Miraculouses right now," Marinette barreled on, running recklessly out on that knife's edge, "and you can go choose people who can sacrifice everything needed without you feeling _guilty_ about it!"

Chat's grips on her hands tightened. He pressed his back more firmly into hers.

"And then," Marinette finished, and if it was bluster or bluff she didn't know it, "keeping our names secret from each other won't _matter anymore_!"

A ringing silence fell.

Tikki said, tentatively, "Ladybug?"

"I think she means it," said Chat, with neither humor nor hesitation. "Ladybug, let me know when you're ready to do this."

"Kitten," said Plagg, very sad.

"I know, Plagg." Chat sounded only resigned, nothing more. "You were right last time. I would have hated everything inside a week anyway. Probably gotten myself killed once or twice or a couple dozen times trying to help Ladybug without you. I don't know what I was thinking. But Stormy Weather got a bit worse than Syren."

Marinette did not want to consider just how thoroughly he was understating the case.

"Ladybug thinks the only way she can keep being Ladybug is if she can lean on me outside the masks same as in them," Chat continued in a matter-of-fact way. He wasn't threatening or blackmailing any more than she was, even if they did have to talk about how maybe he _had_ been while Syren was drowning the city. He was just laying out what they knew. "I don't think anything's wrong with this plan. I think there's a lot wrong with a plan that lets the weight of this break her. If we lose her, then maybe I'll throw the ring in your face right away, and maybe I'll hang around long enough that the next Ladybug can get her feet under her before she has to find a new Chat Noir, and maybe by then I'm already too thoroughly dead to recover. Right now I neither know nor care. My point is, if you lose her, you lose me."

Chat let that hang for a moment in the silence, too.

"And if the only thing between us and being able to _keep her_ is how we're fifteen fucking years old?" Chat paused to rein in his growl. "I don't want to give this up. But us being too young _is_ a problem you can solve by finding people who are _older_. And _I will not lose her_!"

In the silence that followed, Marinette remembered what Chat had said about Ladybug to provoke Papa-Garou. She contemplated what Marinette herself had told Chat the preceding night. How upset she'd been at the thought that Chat Noir might pursue anyone but Ladybug, no matter how little Ladybug might intend to be caught. How it always half wrecked her day when she woke from a nightmare of losing him, even when (as with the real Timebreaker) it didn't stick, and how her mood never entirely recovered until the next akuma—until she could personally confirm her dream wasn't true. How delighted, how relieved, how _happy_ she'd been to hear how he cared about Marinette but meant to go on loving Ladybug.

She considered that maybe, she hadn't lied.

"Chat Noir—" began Tikki.

"Tikki," Plagg interrupted. "I hate this too. But they're right."

Tears shimmered in Tikki's eyes. She shook her head.

" _Fuck this_ ," snarled Marinette, jolting to her feet. Dumping this bullshit on new Miraculous wielders, adults or otherwise, wasn't an option. Letting herself shatter under the pressure when her partner was right there, _could be_ right there if only they knew each other's names, wasn't an _option_. Taking being Chat Noir away from her partner, who loved this and always had, who needed somewhere safe since his home clearly wasn't, who wanted to be there for her and needed her there for him— _wasn't an option_.

Marinette dropped to her knees in front of Chat Noir. _Adrien_. She could see recognition in his widening eyes, and confusion, and unshed tears, and—something sweet and soft she'd seen Chat feeling before, that he tended to hide when he noticed her noticing.

She hadn't been sure, before. He was often hard to take seriously. But maybe it was love, after all.

"Adrien," she said, smiling through the tears that were falling once more.

"Marinette!" said Adrien, grinning. "Of course it's you!" He grabbed her into another hug, or maybe she grabbed him, not that the difference mattered. "Who else could—oh, _shit_ ," he interrupted himself. "Problem with this unmasked mutual support plan, my lady. I'm not sure Marinette has ever gotten a full sentence out in the right order while speaking to Adrien in your life!"

Marinette thumped him between the shoulder blades. "I will beat you to death with your own umbrella," she told him tartly, which, being a perfectly coherent sentence, immediately disproved his point. She pulled back a little; she had to watch his face. Right now he mostly looked perplexed. "The one you lent me the day we met—the _second_ day we met," Marinette corrected herself. "Right when I fell in love with you."

Adrien blinked several times.

"That was…only a couple hours after rerunning Stoneheart," he said at last. "When _I_ fell in love with _you_."

"You see my point about mutual obsession," interjected Tikki.

"Shut up," chorused Marinette and Adrien.

As it happened, she did. Probably Adrien did too; probably he was connecting the dots with her many photos of him, how either of her behaved around him as Adrien versus around anybody else including him as Chat, possibly even what she'd told him about the note she hadn't checked she was holding when she gave him the triple-damned laxative prescription! Fuck, maybe he'd already _known_ about her crush, and he hadn't wanted to say, be it to avoid embarrassing her or to keep awkwardness at bay or only to put off telling Marinette he was in love with someone else; the small matter of that being Ladybug was surely meant to remain forever unmentioned. It wasn't like Marinette's feelings here were any great secret.

No, Tikki was right, Marinette knew. It was just that she, they, didn't feel like caring.

"How about," Plagg said cheerfully, "you two finish this conversation in that conveniently nearby bedroom of the lady's? Because Tikki and I have some catching up to do. And I bet there's cheesy bread in the bakery, and I'm _hungry_!"

"Glutton," Adrien said, amused.

"Let's go through the bakery," Marinette suggested, considering the time of day. "Me first, so I can threaten Papa out of pulling that nonsense again. You're staying for dinner."

Adrien's face broke into a sun-after-storm smile. He pushed himself up, bringing Marinette upright with him. "Plagg, claws out!"

"Tikki," said Marinette, and swallowed hard, watching Chat Noir watch her. "Spots on."

* * *

Marinette leaned on the wall by the stairs to the school and fiddled with a torn corner of the recyclable tray that held the two and a half cups of coffee she'd gotten from a nearby café earlier that morning. Alya and Nino were beside her, debating whether Stormy Weather: Attack of the Redux would have gone less terrifyingly with Rena Rouge and Carapace to help. Marinette, who now thought Carapace's Shellter might have helped (Rena's Mirage, probably not) but simply hadn't been thinking then, was only half listening. Especially since that was Adrien's ride pulling up.

Chloé descended on Adrien almost the moment the Gorilla drove off. "Oh, Adrien!" she exclaimed, draping herself over him. "It's horrible, simply _horrible_ what people are saying now Aurore _Beauréal_ is blaming _me_ for her being a villain! You have to help me make them stop."

Adrien threw frantic glances around the courtyard. When his gaze landed on Marinette, she gave him her most encouraging smile.

He untwisted himself from Chloé's grasp to stand an arm's length away. "I don't have to help you anything, Chloé," Adrien told her, no louder than Chloé herself had spoken, but no quieter and more compellingly. People who pointedly never paid attention to Chloé were turning to watch now. "I know you were there for Mme. Mendeleiev's lesson Monday. I know you're who hurt Aurore last week. 'Once a villain, always a villain'—weren't those your _exact_ words, _Queen Wasp_?"

A round of shocked noises went through the audience. No one blamed, no one _was_ to blame, someone who caught the butterflu for what they did while out of it. That Parisian tradition had originated here at Collège Françoise Dupont.

Chloé stiffened with fury. "How _dare_ you—"

"If you don't want to _be_ a villain," Adrien continued, his voice still carrying across the courtyard, "there are a lot of things you have to do differently. Most of them will mean more if you work them out for yourself. But let me suggest where to start. Find out whether Aurore wants you to apologize to her. If she does, then do it, and _mean_ it."

"Why should I?" Chloé demanded.

Adrien shrugged. "Lots of reasons. The one you probably care about is, until you stop being a professional hazard to Ladybug's health, I'm not speaking to you."

Chloé stared at him, beginning to cry. It almost looked sincere; maybe it was. "Adrien, I thought you were my friend!"

"I was," Adrien told her. "I'm not."

He turned away, leaving her staring stunned after him as he headed over to Marinette, Nino, and Alya. Everyone else let their attention return to what they'd been doing; Adrien slumped against the wall beside Marinette. "Well, that sucked," he muttered.

"You did good," Marinette told him, holding out the caramel latte. "Drink."

"Is this coffee?" Adrien asked, sniffing at it. "I'm not allowed coffee."

Marinette snorted. "I do not care what your father thinks of this."

"There's actually a reason I'm not allowed coffee," Adrien told her.

"It's not going to stunt your growth," Marinette replied, rolling her eyes, "and even if it did, I don't see where you have cause to complain, o tall one. If you tell me you've slept a wink this week, I'm calling you a liar. Drink your coffee."

"When I'm bouncing off the walls later, blame yourself." Adrien gulped down half the cup. "Aack! Hot hot hot!"

Marinette, unable to help herself, started giggling.

Alya and Nino were staring between them. Had been for a bit, actually, Marinette belatedly noticed. "Marinette?" Alya asked in tones of much confusion. "What…happened here?"

Marinette blinked at her. "I bought him coffee?"

"You know what I meant."

"I'm not complaining," said Adrien, and looked down at the coffee cup and shrugged and, more carefully, drank some more.

The upside of having the remaining cup and a half of coffee in hand was Marinette couldn't throw her arms around Adrien right now. That was also the downside. She took a swallow from her partial cup. "You following the discussion on that _Schrödinger's Miraculous_ post?"

"There is one hell of a fight in those comments," Adrien answered. "Couple of Princeton University researchers versus the commenter with the best substantiated claim to being Chat Noir. Apparently, until he provides unarguable proof of this, he's not a primary source, just a kid with a cattitude."

Marinette choked on her coffee and started laughing again.

Adrien finished his latte. Marinette swapped his empty cup for the remaining full one. "Appreciate this slower," she told him between giggles.

" _More_ coffee?" Adrien sipped this—a mocha latte with considerable honey and extra cream—and dropped to one knee beside her, taking her left hand and gazing up with wide adoring eyes. "I love you, Marinette, marry me."

"I hate to remind you," Marinette told him, trying to maintain her best 'Ladybug is not impressed' face, "but we're fifteen." She tugged on his hand, still fighting snickers. "Get up."

"Awwww." Adrien rose smoothly to his feet, bringing her hand to his lips while smirking. Goddamn him.

"I have a line here." Marinette's best severe voice currently wasn't very. "I need a straight face to use it."

Adrien gestured with his coffee-filled hand for her to continue.

"I like my lovers like I like my coffee." Marinette grinned at him. "Warm, sweet, and strong."

Adrien went pink. "Well, you know particle physicists," he said with a lazy grin. "We do it with charm."

Marinette snorted. "Uh-huh. You're totally a mathematical physicist."

Adrien groaned. Marinette laughed.

Nino raised a hand. "Um, not to spoil the mood, but what is happening here?"

"She's insulting me," Adrien said at once. "She is spreading lies and slander. My reputation will never recover." Marinette laughed harder. At Alya's quizzical noise, Adrien sighed long-sufferingly and explained, "Mathematical physicists understand the theory of how to do it, but have difficulty obtaining practical results."

"In fairness," Marinette told Alya and Nino, still laughing, "he hasn't experimented recently."

" _Hey_ ," said an offended Adrien.

Who then stilled, staring down at the hand he still held. Then lifted his gaze to her lips, then to meet her eyes.

"I was wondering how long it would take you," Marinette told him quietly.

Adrien raised his eyebrows. "I was waiting for you to ask."

Marinette smirked. "Kiss me, dork."

"Nope, too many people," said Adrien, sounding flippant but looking sad, and Marinette didn't have to like the reasoning to agree with it. "Come on, class starts soon." He headed for the school entrance, Marinette coming around to walk beside him without dropping his hand. Even if she wanted to, she didn't think she could let him go right now; she could see Aurore by the door. None of this was Aurore's fault, and Marinette was well practiced by now at not letting people see her twitch at memories of fighting their akumatized selves. But it was so much easier with her partner's hand in hers, steady and warm and strong.

"Seriously, girl," hissed Alya, catching up, "what _happened_ last night?"

Marinette glanced over at Adrien, who was smiling, then back to Alya. They hadn't decided yet whether or to what extent they wanted to bring Rena Rouge in, or Carapace, and anyway there were still people, so Marinette only said breezily, "Oh, we had an overdue heart to heart."

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Dreamwidth](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/) and [Tumblr](http://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/).


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